they dwell together, and labour in common to make their habitations, in which they pass three-fourths of their lives; they retire to it in stormy or rainy weather, and at the approach of danger; they never go out but in the finest weather, and even then to no great distance: on these occasions one stands as sentinel upon an elevated place, while the others are sporting in the fields, or cutting the grass for hay, and no sooner does he perceive a man, an eagle, a dog, &c. than he gives the alarm by a kind of whistle, and is himself the last to enter the cell. They make no provision for winter, as if they foresaw that such a precaution would be useless; but when they perceive the first approaches of the season, in which they will be in a torpid state, they close up the entrance of their dwelling, and which they effect with so much solidity and care, that it is much more easy to dig up the earth in any other part. They are at this time very fat, and some of them will weigh twenty pounds; in this plight they remain three months, after which they waste by degrees, and are quite thin by the end of winter. When discovered in their retreats they are rolled up like balls, and covered with hay; in this state they may be taken away, and even killed, without shewing any sense of pain. The fattest are generally taken for food, and the young ones kept for taming. Like the dormouse they are revived by a gradual heat, and those kept warm in a house never become torpid, but are as lively in the winter as at any other time. We have already observed that the torpid state is occasioned by the congelation of the blood, and it is remarked in the Philosophical Transactions, No. 397, that when in this state of torpor, the circulation of the blood is slow, the secretions languid, and the blood not being renewed by fresh acquisitions of chyle, is then without serum. Besides it is uncertain whether they remain for seven or eight months in a torpid state as most authors pretend. Their burrows are deep, and they live together in great numbers; they therefore must retain their heat some time, and may then feed on the grass they have treasured up. M. Altman, in his Treatise on the animals of Switzerland, says, that the hunters let the marmots remain three weeks or a month unmolested in their cells; that they never dig for them in mild weather, as without this precaution the animals awake, and penetrate deeper in the earth; but that on opening their cells in hard frosts they find them in so torpid a state, as to be carried off without difficulty; it may therefore be concluded that, in all respects, they resemble the dormice, and that if they are longer in a torpid state, it is because the winter is longer in the climates which they inhabit.